"One of our top priorities as Shell in India is to build awareness and brand preference for Shell as a master brand," Amit Ghugre, Automotive Sales and Marketing Manager, Shell Lubricants India said in a conversation with exchange4media.
Ghugre also spoke about the company’s new campaign 'Sapne Honge Apne', the oil major’s vision for India and how they were going to increase ad spends in the country as the company and the world recovers from post-Covid dents.
The influence of digital is making consumers more aware of high-end bike and vehicle maintenance, which is leading the company to add a consumer-focused brand building to their marketing mix, he said. "In our marketing strategy mix, which has invested heavily traditionally on the BTL activations and influencers, we are also adding a mix of consumer-focused brand-building exercises this year. The association with the movie ‘Pathaan’ was meant to target not just the mechanic community but the consumers too. We will see, in the days to come, more investment from Shell Lubricants on building consumer-focused marketing campaigns. We are on the verge of doing it. I think it had to be preceded by a launch of the right customer-centric portfolio. We are aggressively building a portfolio of products, which are more consumer-centric and related to their needs.”
Shell Lubricants recently sponsored two teams at the Formula E race - Mahindra and Nissan. "In September, we have a partnership with Ducati at the Moto GP event. Historically, we've had a long partnership with Ferrari in the four-wheeler segment, although they don't have an India circuit this year. But those are the partnerships with top bikes, cars and competitions that we actively participate in and engage in," he said.
About the 'Sapne Honge Apne' campaign by Shell Lubricants, Ghugre said: "We offer assistance to mechanics along with some branding opportunities as the shell branding adds credibility. 'Sapne Honge Apne' campaign is an umbrella concept, where we are actually telling the mechanics that we know what you are looking for, and Shell will be there to contribute to help them achieve those aspirations."
On the impact of Covid and the recovery, he said, "Covid led to not a pause but a significant cut-down. I don't think it is driven so much by the other aspects like raw material challenges. At the end of the day, they are also impacting our PNL. Also, the new realities post-Covid with regards to consumers’ media consumption is changing the dynamics.”
“But what is exciting about this year is that we are going to significantly scale up our investment on the digital and traditional media as well, in that order. There will be more marketing campaigns primarily on the two-wheeler segment, which we believe is an important opportunity for us. We're definitely going to leverage our PR activity. But if we look at our target audience as truck drivers, for example, our focus will be more on engagement at a local level. If it is about two-wheelers, it is going to be more mass advertisement via digital or offline because the objective is to reach out to consumers on a mass scale.”
On the company's strategy to enter Tier 2 and 3 cities, Ghugre shared, "Historically, we have been focused on the metro or urban centres. That is where we are stronger. In tier two or tier three cities, we don't have that kind of presence, even in terms of distribution. But that is going to be our focus and so we have decided to invest in two-wheelers as our primary marketing investment choice because that creates awareness and engagement in tier cities. This category is much more fragmented than the car segment."
